I have seen the music video game mountain and it is called “Rock Band.” I played the game at the EA Fall Preview event on a stage, in front of people and I didn’t suck.

I wanted to play the new drum peripheral but one of the folks sitting in line with me wanted to try the new peripheral and I agreed. Instead, I played the familiar old guitar, which was more detailed than the “Guitar Hero” ones.

The buttons have a clicky feel to them of a cell phone. There are more buttons at the base of the neck and at the top. The whammy bar sticks out a bit farther.

I played with three other strangers. One guy had the guts to sing outloud, and there must have been something about the stage, but he didn’t sound half bad. On stage, we rocked out to Garbage’s “I Think I’m Paranoid.”

After failing the first time, we readjusted the difficult and we pulled it off. I talked with Sean Baptiste, Harmonix’s manager of community development, after the hands-on play-through and we chatted about the differences between his latest project and previous one.

“At it’s core, the design philosophy is delivering a rock experience,” he said. ” From the beginning, we wanted it to be as authentic as possible. We wanted to let you feel what it’s like to be on stage, with people cheering your name.”

It sort of felt like that jamming in the bright lights of Electronic Arts. With 40 license songs and the just announced Grateful Dead tracks, I’m looking forward to seeing more of the game.

Later in the day, I talked with Chris Ferriera, the lead designer for “Army of Two.” This shooter from EA Montreal wants to take the genre and evolve it into something else. To do this, the studio, which used the Unreal 3 engine for the title, placed the emphasis on co-op play.

Set in modern times, the game revolves around private military contractors and the ethical problems they face on their company missions. During missions, they come against dilemmas of killing civilians or helping the wrong people in wars. This is a heavy subject for video games, but the rapport between the two characters Tyson Rios and Elliott Salem softens it with some humor, Ferriera says.

As for the gameplay, it focuses on teamwork and helping each other out to defeat enemies. To do this, there’s a number of different tactics. One part is the aggrometer, a measure of enemy aggression. When one player shoots a lot, the enemies focus on him. This allows his partner to sneak around and take out enemies from behind.

In another senario, players will have to take out a soldier holding a bulletproof shield. One person has to draw him forward while the other person can shoot him in his vulnerable backside. Once he’s eliminated, players can take the shield and become a walking tank.

It’s these little gameplay elements that make me believe that “Army of Two” may live up to the ambition that its developers put on it.